298 
TURBINATED UNIVALVES, 
posed to yield the Tyrian dye, obtained its food 
by boring into other shells by means of an 
elongated tongvie ; and Lamarck says, that all 
those Mollusks whose shells have a notch or 
canal at the base of their aperture, are fur- 
nished with a similar power of boring, by means 
of a retractile proboscis.* In his arrangement 
of invertebrate animals, they form a section of 
the Trachelipods, which he calls carnivorous. 
{Zouphages). In the other section of Tracheli- 
pods, which he calls herbivorous {Phytiphages) 
the aperture of the shell is entire, and the animals 
have jaws formed for feeding on vegetables. 
Mr. Dillwyn further asserts, that every fossil 
Turbinated Univalve of the older beds, from the 
* The proboscis, by means of which these animals are enabled 
to drill holes through shells, is armed with a number of minute 
teeth, set like the teeth of a file, upon a retractile membrane, 
which the animal is enabled to fix in a position adapted for 
boring or filing a hole from without, through the substance of 
shells, and through this hole to extract and feed upon the juices 
of the body within them. A familiar example of this organ may 
be seen in the retractile proboscis of Buccinum Lapillus, and Buc- 
cinum Undatum, the common whelks of our own shores. A 
valuable Paper on this subject has recently been published by 
Mr. Osier (Phil. Trans., 1832, Part 2, P. 497), in which he 
gives an engraved figure of the tongue of the Buccinum Unda- 
tum, covered with its rasp, whereby it perforates the shells of 
animals destined to become its prey. Mr. Osier modifies the 
rule or the distinction between the shells of carnivora and herbi- 
vora, by shewing that, although it is true that all beaked shells 
indicate their molluscous inhabitant to have been carnivorous, an 
entire aperture does not always indicate an herbivorous character. 
